Category: Update

Different people have a different understanding of what poverty is: lack of basic needs and necessities to survive, poverty of the mind- on grounds of how they think about themselves and lack of knowledge and understanding of what’s around them, living in the slum etc. All seem similar but quite different. On the other hand, the same applies to the solutions. How do we end poverty, make it history? Different approaches, strategies and ideas exist. The good news is, a significant number of people are really trying to create change and solutions to poverty. The bad news is, though some have succeeded, most have failed. Lasting change is a process and the answers are deeply rooted in those most affected. That is why building relationship[s and involving the communities we work in is important. Community Organizing! To end poverty, we must re-think it, ask difficult questions on why it exists and be willing to work on the root causes . Natalie Finstad, co-founded of Tatua Kenya talks about community as the path to the future and as a way to developing sustainable and just solutions to poverty on Natalie’s TEDex

How can we begin to examine the identities that we are assigning to people based on where they come from, their neighbourhoods etc?

Rose Chege a community organizer from Tatua Kenya , has continued to lead the Matasia community towards creating the change they want to see as regards the education of their children. As the Matasia community, they identified the challenge to be poor academic performance caused by lack of food for the children. Most of these people in Matasia are small scale farmers and upper lower class families earning at least a dollar per day. Years back, a feeding program was introduced by Government with support from WFP in the Arid and semi-arid areas (ASALS) and some schools in the slums of major towns in all Kenyan public primary schools. The Government could not sustain the program due to lack of funds; therefore, the program stopped and it was the responsibility of the parents to feed the children. However, this change has created Continue reading “UPDATE: Matasia unites to improve its Children’s education.”→

Gabriel Odhiambo(Gabby) is a fellow with Tatua Kenya from Mukuru kwa Njenga running a campaign on child labor and Education. In his community children engage in manual labor at a very tender age at the expense of their education. Their parents also seems to be comfortable with that worrying trend due to the economic hardships of life, this being the primary reason for allowing their children to find work instead of going to school.What Gabby wonders is whether the parents are aware of the consequences of this action. For the last two months, the 2014 Tatua Kenya fellows have been conducting listening projects Continue reading “UPDATE: COMMUNITIES LEADING SOCIAL CHANGE”Letting Children be Children””→

What we have done for ourselves alone die with us; what we have done for others and the world remains…immortal.Tatua and the world have lost a great woman in the past week, beautiful both inside and out. Last year, a time like this, Tatua Kenya had the honour of hosting Katherine Mcquade-Toig. She began a blog http://iseeafrica2013.blogspot.com/ to capture her experience. She wanted to run a campaign on health here in Kenya and had her heart out for the Community Health Workers (CHWs)in the slums. Here’s an excerpt from her blog, that challenges all of us to do better. Even in her passing on, she will continue to challenge us with the passion she had in creating a just world. Continue reading “In Memoriam: Katherine Mcquade-Toig”→